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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

No, it's not fine. There isn't a good kind of racism and a bad kind of racism. Much of your argument here is probably best directed to Publius, who disagrees with you directly about, well, all of this.

There's a benign version of the argument you're making here, the one that protects cultural and religious tolerance while establishing some set of core values (pluralism, the rule of law, representative government, separation of church and state) set above all other concerns. But you're making, and re-making, a case for excluding people because their differences of religion (your example) and culture make native-born people unhappy. That's not OK, and I'm pretty sure I've got the founders on my side of this argument.

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> No, it's not fine. There isn't a good kind of racism and a bad kind of racism.

It’s not “racism” at all because it has nothing to do with “race,” which is a superficial construct. It’s about substantive differences in people’s worldview, beliefs, values, etc., which are relevant to living with people in communities and sharing a government with people.

> But you're making, and re-making, a case for excluding people because their differences of religion (your example) and culture make native-born people unhappy. That's not OK, and I'm pretty sure I've got the founders on my side of this argument.

Whether the founders envisioned it or not has nothing to do with whether it’s “racism.” There is no moral obligation to allow people with different values into your community and allow them to vote on the government that you live in. To the contrary, that notion violates the human right of self determination.

Besides that, the founders were not multiculturalists. America at the time was a collection of mostly monocultural communities. Massachusetts and several other states still had an established church. The founders created a framework where those disparate groups could cooperate in a limited fashion through a federal government of limited and enumerated powers.

That ship, however, said long ago. If a federal Department of Education exists and says what kids learn in schools and the federal government says that 99.9% Protestant communities in Iowa can’t have prayer in schools you can’t invoke what the framers thought about how pluralism should work.

Madison, in considering whether the legislature should be limited to native-born citizens, had this to say:

"[T]he door of this part of the federal government is open to merit of every description, whether native or adoptive, whether young or old, and without regard to poverty or wealth, or to any particular profession of religious faith."

There may be countries in the world that don't have a moral obligation to allow people from different cultures and religions (I'm avoiding "values" here, since it's a squiggly concept). But we're not one of them.

The moral obligation to allow equal participation of different groups who are already here follows from the concept of democracy. But that does not imply anything about how people within a country should view prospective immigrants. That the founders embraced certain principles because they were dealing with a union that already included disparate groups. They never confronted, much less addressed, the prospect of immigration changing the culture of already established communities.

The moral question here is more fundamental than your over-generalization of the founders’ intent. Human beings have a right to self determination, and they have the freedom of association. You don’t lose that right just because you were born in America.

This isn't an over-generalization of the founders intent. It is the founders directly, clearly stated intent. I'm doing literally no extrapolation at all: you can just crack open Federalist 52 or whatever and read away.

Here is Federalist 52: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed52.asp

Show me where it says there is a moral obligation to accept immigrants who will move into your community and change its culture? You’re reading all that into a single sentence:

“A representative of the United States must be of the age of twenty-five years; must have been seven years a citizen of the United States; must, at the time of his election, be an inhabitant of the State he is to represent; and, during the time of his service, must be in no office under the United States. Under these reasonable limitations, the door of this part of the federal government is open to merit of every description, whether native or adoptive, whether young or old, and without regard to poverty or wealth, or to any particular profession of religious faith.”

The sentence is saying that elected office should be broadly available to all citizens, which is a point nobody is disputing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac...

Ironically, the INS Act of 1965 was sold to the public with a lie: https://www.history.com/news/immigration-act-1965-changes

> The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants,” lead supporter Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy (D-Mass.) told the Senate during debate. “It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.”

> I've got the founders on my side of this argument.

The limit citizenship to "free White persons of good character" founding fathers [1]? Or Thomas Jefferson, who considered that, when freed, Blacks should be "removed beyond the reach of mixture" [2]? James Madison, who wrote "To be consistent with existing and probably unalterable prejudices in the U. S. the freed blacks ought to be permanently removed beyond the region occupied by or allotted to a White population." [3]? Or Benjamin Franklin, writing "the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small [..] I could wish their Numbers were increased [..] But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind." [4]?

As an American you were probably exposed to much propaganda about how the US is a "nation founded on an idea", or similar nonsense. But as a foreign observer, let me assure you nothing could be further from the truth. Did you never ask yourself, if the founders were such racial egalitarians, how is it that, aside from the descendants of Black slaves (10%), the US was nearly entirely white (87.5%) until 1950? That leaves just 2.5% for immigration from the entire rest of the world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1790

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/03/what-je...

[3] https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s65...

[4] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-00...

I honestly don't care what foreigners think about our fidelity to the ideas of the founders; I'm making a simple positive argument about the clearly stated goal of the founders.

I've sourced my claims, so could you likewise show me this clearly stated goal? You mention Federalist 52 in your other comment, but wikipedia's summary says nothing about racial egalitarianism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._52

I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't care about the premise of your question, so there's not much for us to productively discuss here. I've been careful about the concepts I'm talking about ("culture" and "religion", both being Rayiner-provided examples of legitimate forms of discrimination). I'm not interested in doing comparative studies on this between different countries; that discussion will be a total mess.

> I don't know what you're talking about

Sure, I'll try to be clearer. You wrote "I'm making a simple positive argument about the clearly stated goal of the founders."

Which goal, and where was it stated?

Again, I don't think you and I are having the same conversation Rayiner and I are, and I don't think it's worth the effort for us to sync up at this point.

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